Lax prison policies exposed by The Citizens' Voice "were substantial factors" in the murder last February of federal correctional officer Eric Williams, attorneys for the inmate accused of the killing argued Wednesday as they laid groundwork to spare him from a death sentence.

The attorneys, James Swetz and Mark Fleming, accused the federal Bureau of Prisons of "negligence" and, in the court filing where they made their claim, demanded federal prosecutors turn over troves of evidence on their investigation and internal prison procedures.

The evidence, they wrote, "will show that BOP policies and negligence were substantial factors in the death of Correctional Officer Williams - a death the media identified as avoidable but foreseeable as a result of BOP policies."

Also Wednesday, Swetz and Fleming demanded a federal investigation to determine the source of confidential material that aided The Voice's reporting, including inmate Jessie Con-ui's discipline and transfer records and a report on a psychological evaluation he submitted to less than 48 hours after the killing.

Swetz did not return a telephone message Wednesday.

Fleming, reached by telephone, declined to answer questions, saying he and Swetz had a policy not to "make any comments to the media about the case."

The attorneys, appointed to the case by a federal judge last March, first raised their concerns about what they deemed "leaks" in a letter to prosecutors on Jan. 7 - a week after The Voice published its investigative report "Free to kill: A ruthless inmate, a lack of discipline, an avoidable death."

The Citizens' Voice has reported extensively over the last 10 months on the policies, cutbacks and lapses that left Williams, a Nanticoke native, susceptible to attack as he patrolled a unit at the United States Penitentiary at Canaan in Wayne County. They include the assignment of one officer to guard 100 or more inmates, the bureau's reluctance to arm officers with pepper spray and the leniency that allowed Con-ui to remain at large within the greater Canaan community.

In "Free to kill," The Voice found a stark shift in the way Con-ui was disciplined in the federal system, from a near zero-tolerance approach for even minor offenses when he arrived in September 2008 at the United States Penitentiary at Victorville, Calif., to the leniency and forgiveness at Canaan that permitted him to remain in the general population despite two serious misconduct violations in the year before the killing.

After each infraction, in March and September 2012, discipline hearing officers ordered Con-ui to serve six months in a special-housing unit, a prison within the prison where he was to be confined to his cell for 23 hours a day. Both times, however, the hearing officer immediately reversed that ruling and said the notoriously bellicose Con-ui could remain in general population so long as he behaved.

Had the sanctions stood, Con-ui's term in special housing would have run through at least March 20 - three weeks after Williams died.

That change in discipline for the violent Con-ui, who gunned down a gang rival outside a Phoenix, Ariz., laundry facility in 2002 and conspired in a cocaine-trafficking ring that led to federal charges and an 11-year sentence - came as political leaders and civil liberties groups pressured the Bureau of Prisons to reduce the number of inmates in special housing and solitary confinement.

"Obviously, a government employee has improperly leaked highly sensitive information to the media which prejudices Mr. Con-ui's defense and may taint the potential jury pool," Swetz and Fleming wrote in the Jan. 7 letter, which they included with their court filing." We intend to discover the source of the leak and assess what damage has been done to Mr. Con-ui's defense."

Swetz and Fleming, in the letter, asked federal prosecutors to provide the names and titles of the person or people responsible for "leaking information" to The Voice, all of The Voice's requests for documents related to the case under the Freedom of Information Act, and disclosure of any measures taken to ensure information obtained by the Bureau of Prisons - including psychological evaluations and disciplinary records - are not "improperly released in the future."

U.S. Attorney Peter Smith and Assistant U.S. Attorney Francis Sempa responded in a letter Jan. 15, saying they did not know who provided the material to The Voice and that "the issue of leaked material may never be resolved."

"Moreover, we fail to understand how the release of prison records to a newspaper 10 months after the murder can in any way mitigate the defendant's actions on Feb. 25, 2013," Smith and Sempa wrote.

Federal prosecutors, they said, have provided nearly 16,000 pages of discovery and hours of video. They said they provided the disciplinary record referenced in The Voice article, as well as disciplinary hearing records of Con-ui's cases, in July 2013 and the psychological report referenced in the article in October 2013.

"The only thing 'new' about the news article is that someone provided this information to a reporter," they wrote.

According to prosecutors, Con-ui charged at officer Eric Williams, knocked him down a staircase, stabbed him 129 times and fractured his skull in multiple places. Con-ui confessed less than 48 hours later, according to a psychological report obtained by The Voice.

"The practices and policies of the BOP have nothing to do with potential mitigating factors," Smith and Sempa wrote, "i.e. factors that somehow lessen the responsibility of your client for the brutal murder of Officer Williams."

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